IP Picks🔎: Sherlock Holmes Meets 'Hacks'
âž• Finding love in a time loop and an inspirational video game tournament
Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for reading along.
Some quick thoughts about Amazon’s recent decision to expand Julia Sommerfeld’s portfolio from overseeing the company’s American publishing operations to its worldwide publishing operations. The news says a lot about the book behemoth’s ambitions in both publishing and other media.
Amazon clearly views stories globally, emphasizing content that will appeal across various cultures. If that wasn’t obvious enough by now, Sommerfeld made a point of bringing it up in the context of the announcement. In fact, she pointed to the company’s deal to publish two Rebecca Yarros novels simultaneously in 26 languages. She also pointed to synergies the company wants to tap into, using Mexican actor Diego Boneta’s debut novel as an example. Amazon is publishing his book in English and Spanish, developing an adaptation for the screen (starring Boneta, natch) and releasing the audiobook (narrated by . . . guess who) through its Audible subsidiary. Now, some industrious agent could put all those deals together separately, but under one roof it certainly suggests a lot of coordinated promotion that will be attractive to many high-profile, multi-hyphenate creators.
And yet the announcement got me thinking about how little of an impression Amazon’s various U.S. publishing imprints have made to date. Those 13 imprints range from the sci-fi-oriented 47North to the YA-centric Skyscape to Mindy Kaling’s Mindy’s Book Studio. I’m not saying they haven’t published many good books (because they certainly have); it’s more that outside of Kaling’s individually-curated label, none of them has established a clear identity or emerged as a brand.
This is one of the downsides of a giant tech company treating content as just feedstock to fuel its platform. IMHO, creativity is an artisanal — not an industrial — process. Big conglomerates will always have outsized power because of their scale. But ultimately, I don’t think they can monopolize creativity. Just look at how self-publishing and fanfic have challenged big companies in ways they never anticipated. At the end of the day, there’s nothing more powerful than an individual creator with passion and a vision.
On to this week’s picks, which include a magical-realist rom-com, a Dan Brown-esque thriller that could be the basis for a new franchise and an uplifting true story about reconnecting with high school friends. The full lineup:
A time-loop rom-com for Gen Z and millennial audiences
A Hacks-meets-Sherlock Holmes procedural
A classic adventure/thriller in the vein of Clive Cussler
A feel-good drama about a thirtysomething man who sets out to reconnect with his high school classmates
A drama set in the world of video-game competitions focusing on three female gamers
